Five Benefits of Hosted Exchange for Small and Medium-Sized Business

Email is the primary mode of communication for small- and medium-sized businesses. To stay productive, employees should be able to access emails from any place and at any time. But the costs of housing an independent server for emails might be intimidating for many SMBs.

Using a hosted Exchange solution is a good option. Here are top five benefits of using hosted Exchange solutions for small- and medium-sized business.

1. Security

Hosted Exchange is much more secure than on-premise Exchange solution which might have 1-2 email servers running an outdated version of Exchange 2000, 2003 or 5.5. The email servers in on-premise solution are housed in the company’s premises and there might be no 24/7 security for the servers. Also, most of the times the Exchange server is wide open to the Internet.

On the other hand, hosted Exchange servers are stationed in data centers which are 24/7 monitored physically and remotely. Hosted solutions have redundant servers setup where multiple servers are running to ensure uptime guarantees up to 99.99%. Also, cloud solutions data center have a team of technicians available 24/7 to respond to any technical problems.

Data centers where the Exchange servers are stationed have intrusion detection system installed and the service providers have SLAs and disaster recovery plans in place. Also, data centers have advanced spam and anti-virus protection tools to secure your email communication.

2. Huge Savings

In terms of costs, using hosted Exchange solutions is quite cheaper than deploying an on-premise solution. To set up on-premise, you need to purchase server systems, Windows server OS, software and other hardware.

You need to consider additional setup costs for firewall, antivirus, and manpower as well. Also, you need to put aside a significant amount of money for maintenance and upgrades.

When you opt for a hosted Exchange server, you would only need 1-2 Exchange administrators and remaining things would be managed by your Exchange services provider. One benefit of using hosted Exchange server is though you are using an old Exchange server, your mail accounts would be migrated to upgraded Exchange environment.

3. Easy Scalability

Scalability is an important factor for businesses. As your business grows, your networking and system will need some kind of expansion to adapt to the growth of customers, data and resources. In on-premise systems, there is always a thought process of not investing that is not currently needed. In simple words, on-premise systems may not be future proof when built.

Scaling on-premise systems can be a nightmare due to the costs involved. You have to pay a hefty amount to purchase hardware and software. When you opt for cloud-based Exchanger service, you just need to pay for the resources you use and if needed you can easily scale up or down to meet your business needs.

4. Ability to Access Anytime and Anywhere

When you use hosted Exchange Servers, you can conduct business from your office or any place where your business takes you. With hosted Exchange servers you can synchronize data on Laptop, mobile, and tablet. Your employees can access email, calendar, and contacts from anyplace at anytime.

5. High Availability

Business continuity is an important aspect for organizations of every size. A technical glitch, service outage or natural disaster can shut your on-premise Exchange solution down and it can take hours or even days to get things working again. During the outage, your employees would not be able to access emails that could lead to several missed business opportunities.

Hosted Microsoft Exchange solutions have a redundant server setup to guarantee high uptime guarantee. The data centers of the service providers are located at different geographical locations. In case one of the Exchanger servers fail due to a technical glitch, or natural disaster, the service provider can redirect mail traffic to locations which are unaffected. This ensures high availability of email communication in all scenarios.

These are some of the benefits of hosted Exchange solutions for SMBs. There is no doubt hosted Exchange solution gives you seamless experience of the cloud technology at reduced costs and minimizing risks at the same time.

Do you know any other benefits of hosted Exchange services? Please feel free to comment.


Posted

in

by

Tags: